Harley Benton TE-90FLT SB Deluxe Series

This guitar is my 3rd HB. I have the fusion T, and the TE-52NA, both of which are excellent, no matter the price. This one caught my eye too, (I love teles!), but there were a few issues with this one. Not Thomann's fault, but it arrived in N. Ireland via UPS in disgraceful condition. The outer carton was busted open, and badly taped together (by UPS), the inner carton was damaged also, the toggle switch had made a hole through the cardboard, and was wrecked. This had to be replaced. The nut was really badly cut, which I also had to replace. The frets were horrendously dirty, almost corroded looking, which required serious polishing to get playable. The output jack was not great either, the cable never felt like it 'got home' properly, there was about 1mm of 'play in it', and it didn't feel good at all, this also had to be replaced.
All in all, a lot of work for a new guitar, which my other HBs didn't *need*.
On the positive side, the filtertron pickups are a joy, if a little difficult to set pickup height, as the screws are really cheap and the heads strip *really* easily.
This hasn't put me off HB guitars though, but this one didn't leave me quite as happy as the other two I own. I sorted it myself, as its a bit of a hassle posting it back from where I live to Germany.
It's a good guitar *now*, it's just a good thing I know how to do some repairs /upgrades, otherwise this one would have gone back immediately.

Bought this and a TE52 at the same time. The guitar was really nicely finished with a few very minor finishing issues

Slight roughness on edges of headstock, nothing major
Sounds good in all positions.

Feels assured, not at all a beginner guitar.

Couple of minor personal dislikes
pickguard is a bit ugly

reversed headstock is a little finicky (for me) for tuning, probably a matter of getting used to it.

For 179 euro it looks and plays like a guitar 2-3 time the price, love it. A nice contrast in look and tone to the more traditional but also great TE52


Update after 2 years:
Brought the guitar for a setup, now a little wiser about QC and guitar issues. Luthier with 20+ years experience checked it out and found uneven frets, on closer inspection he found that the frets were not seated properly as they had not been curved to the fretboard radius and were starting to sprout. All told- 100 euros to fix.

Here's the catch 22, I would not have known as an inexperienced player what the problem was and so wouldn't have spotted in time to return to Thomann. Getting a luthier to fix the problem invalidated my warranty and Thomann will not reimburse (although they have said that any separate issues will be resolved under remaining warranty)

Advice: see if your luthier will inspect the guitar before the 30 day return has elapsed and save yourself money and headaches later, although tbh you shouldn't have to if the QC was done right in the first place. A 'stain' on what was otherwise a good guitar experience.


Further update, Thomann, in their kindness took back my luthier adjusted guitar and without hesitation sent me a new one (after 2.5 years). The new one is a little different than the first. Lighter body, noticeably lighter (more chambers, less ash?) neck is good bit fret ends can be felt, not sharp, just felt. Hardware looks different, bridge particularly, feels a little cheaper? Tuners are spaced very close together on the headstock which can make tuning awkward as even my small hands/fingers are obstructed by other tuning pegs when turning one peg. I think this guitar is made in a completely different factory to the first.

A+ for Thomann's customer service.

This guitar is excellent for the price range, period. Are you going to sell your Fenders? No. Can you gig and record with it? Absolutely.

I was lucky to receive a well setup instrument, which saves me quite a bit of time. With one exception: the pickup height isn’t ideal, and there is little or no adjustment available. (I will have to disassemble and see if adding height adjustment springs is possible.)

What’s good? Straight neck. Rather good fret work. Nice and resonant. Very good setup on this. Bridge is decent-to-good. I see no need to replace it. The pickups sound great, exactly what they are meant to replicate, though I’d like a little more height adjustment. Very nice paint job on this one too.

What’s not good? Plastic nut. (Often an easy replacement, let’s see how much glue is back there…) Typical scratchy frets that you find in this price range. (Easy fix.). The tuners are also quite poor. (Easily replaced). The jack, typical cheap jack. Replaceable. Will I? Not sure. Let’s see how it breaks in…

Overall this is a bargain and a welcome addition to my music room.

Pros:
This is a great sounding guitar. It's got sort of a"tele on steroids" type sound, not a million miles from Keith Richards' sound. It cleans up beautifully for a chiming bell-like tone & also sounds good when you pile on the gain for some heavier stuff. Properly set up, it plays beautifully, with a low slinky action.

The Cons:
This instrument took a week longer than usual to arrive. When I queried the lack of a despatch confirmation with Thomann, they informed me that it was because the guitar was being sorted out by their QC dept. who were backed up.
The guitar arrived with a horrifically high action, the bridge wasn't intonated, and several frets were choking out & buzzy (even with the high action). There was a huge bow in the neck because the truss rod had absolutely no tension in it at all.
I spent an afternoon sorting out the high frets, truss rod, and intonation. Then I discovered that the tuning stability was awful. The culprit was the string trees which drag the bass strings down to harshly causing friction. The bass strings would go sharp continually. Also the tuners are pretty poor... very "lumpy" feeling, almost like they have grit or something in the gears.

I will be replacing the tuners for a set of staggered ones which will eliminate the need for the string trees & then it will be an incredibly good guitar. Would I recommend one of these? Yes... as long as you have some basic set-up skills and are prepared to budget on a new set of tuners. For that reason, I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner. Think of it as a project guitar & you won't go wrong.

I think this would be an excellent choice for a first guitar. Body is made out of 3 pieces, neck is from a single piece of wood and has nice satin finish which I prefer to painted necks. I've seen this model in videos before but didn't like the colors... until I saw that they have it in sunburst. I could never understand the reverse headstock on guitars but it is what it is. It's a cheap guitar so no roasted neck, no locking tuners or other extras but pickups are excellent. I never played any real filtertrons so I don't know how they are supposed to sound but I think they would sound just like these. Low noise humbuckers but with a very interesting timbre, hard to describe really but I think very suitable for rockabilly or country. There was a video on youtube where the user was demonstrating defective electronics - microphonic pickups on this model. The one that I received doesn't have this problem and was reasonably set up out of the box. Once I change the strings I may try to lower the action but it's reasonably good as it is.

the guitar is fine and overall i'm very happy.

only flaw i noticed was the string ferrules weren't lined up well at all but they were functional and i'm not the kind of person to be looking at crooked ferrules all day especially as the guitar plays well and sounds great.

the guitar didn't have the tummy cut but i'll soon fix that.

apart from those minor niggles all good, hardware, pickups, neck and frets etc. all very acceptable, i only stopped playing it because the oxidisation on the strings was wearing off on my fingers and beginning to stain the maple.

i think i will buy me another Harley Benton before too long.

I mainly use guitar for live gigs and also for some studio work.

The guitar was well set up when I took it out from the box. Fretwork was amazing, but whoever was doing it wasn't very careful, because there are visible trace of fretwork on the neck. But for me that is not an issue since guitar feels comfortable to play. It stays in tune, and neck is also comfortable to play. The biggest plus are pickups. They sound nice and have some bite. I really like them. They are little bit scooped, but that is not an issue for me. Also reverse headstock looks very cool.
The plastic pickguard is unnecesery and I would remove it, if there wasnt relief hole beneath it. Also some quallity nut would be nice. Guitar have a litlle bit of neck dive, but I can live with that.

Pros:
- great value for money
- great looks
- pickups sounds amazing
- great neck

Cons:
- litlle neck dive specially when playing in stand position
- plastic pickguard cover
- plastic nut

I would recommend this guitar to all who wants to try more agressive version of a tele. For that price you can't go wrong.